In the following essay, Baker considers Gravity's Rainbow by situating the text within the dual contexts of 1960s American radicalism and 1940s German imperialism.

Across Pynchon's body of writing, there is an abiding concern with the radical democratic politics of 1960s America. That concern manifested itself as early as “Entropy,” Pynchon's self-professed “Beat story” (Slow Learner 14), in which the reader is left, finally, with two distinct and contradictory images: On the one hand, we see Callisto's ineffectual paralysis, as he holds the dead bird and stares at the window that Aubade has just shattered; on the other hand, we see the image of Meatball Mulligan attempting to “try and keep his lease-breaking party from deteriorating into total chaos” by giving wine to the sailors, separating...